A home of one’s own

Our home was now mine, but it didn’t feel like me.

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Self-portrait in my old living room. March 2022.

At the age of 38, I woke up in a strange house. It was my house, the same as ever. I sat on the same couch and slept in the same bed. But it was unnaturally still, like a museum of my marriage. There were no keys on the counter, no clothes on the floor, no warmth on the other side of the bed. For the first time in my life, I was living alone.

During our divorce, my ex stayed in Kenya and I returned to the Brooklyn apartment we’d shared for a decade. We’d grown up together in these rooms and picked every piece of furniture. We had white carpets and white couches and the abstract art of a high-end waiting room. It was minimalist and matching like a West Elm window.

“Where is all your stuff,” friends would ask. “Your clutter, your tchotchkes, your piles of bills?” We had space, I’d answer, and closets. I kept our home pristine, playing a traditional homemaker role in a modern house. Our mess was carefully filed away out of sight. I saw it then as minimalism. Now I see it was my model of marriage.

When that marriage ended, our apartment became mine. It dawned on me that I could decorate it any way I pleased. I’ve always had an eye for home design. As a child, I had no use for dolls but loved decorating doll houses, sewing tiny floral curtains from fabric scraps. But all my grown-up curtains were white, my creativity muted. My ex deferred to my taste, but I’d never picked anything for our home without his approval.

The week I officially started the divorce, I was seized by a fierce desire to redecorate and reclaim this austere space for my own. His home office was the first thing to go. We had both worked from home for years, sitting side-by-side under the eaves. Our desks were so close that we could have touched. But even from that distance, I could rarely reach him. My husband was missing even when he was there.

Now his half was achingly empty, the white walls still scuffed from his feet. I hurled color at the void: a deep green wall, a rich red carpet, a wild wallpaper of tropical birds and vines. I papered over the scuff marks in a blaze of passion, then added my largest plants to my jungle nook. I’d grown them since we moved in a decade ago, housewarming gifts gone feral. It felt fitting, like nature reclaiming a ruined city. Maybe if I could cram every corner with life, I’d leave no room for absence.

A friend gave me a painting of a girl sitting in a storm, with a bird perched on her head. “It’s about Hurricane Katrina,” she said, “but it reminds me of you.” The painting became the patron saint of my divorce, the jungle nook my shrine. Through the long legal unwinding, I sat with myself and my Lady of the Storm. I lit candles and blasted Adele and howled with pain.

It was raw and real, but it was no longer muted. In the din, I began to hear a quiet voice that I recognized as my own. It said: “You know who you are, and your center will hold. You will be ok.” Slowly, I began to trust that voice as my constant companion. There was a difference, I learned, in being lonely and being alone.

My new jungle nook. December 2021.

Gradually, the divorce cyclone spun itself out. I began to emerge, tentatively, like a hermit crab testing the salt air. I felt ready to entertain and maybe even date. But my living room was a time capsule. Two years after our split, it still felt as sterile and subdued as the woman I used to be. I craved vibrance and intimacy. I knew how to be alone and now I wanted to let people in.

I bought a luxurious Moroccan rug off Etsy that my ex would have hated and took perverse pleasure in the thick purple piles. I gave away the white art and white vases. I tried colorful throw pillows and funky paintings that clashed with the white couch. But my protests felt hollow, a reaction instead of a reclamation. I was trying to banish phantoms with pillows. No matter what I did, the room refused to feel like mine.

Perhaps the problem was the couch, with its slouchy linen and suburban bulk. Its very inoffensiveness offended me. Yet a major furniture purchase felt daunting to do alone. Furnishing a family room meant confronting my hopes for a family. Would I drink coffee on the couch with a partner? Should I buy a sectional to cuddle with kids? Did I need fabric that could handle a pet? The couch was a supporting actor, but I didn’t know what my next act might hold.

My American friends were Team Sectional. “You can’t have too much space to sprawl,” they argued. My French friends, true to type, voted loveseat. “Surely you want to snuggle with your lover?” they countered. “Why would you want more space between you?” On this question, I leaned Continental. I lacked both lover and pet, but on principle was strongly pro-snuggle.

I found a teal velvet sofa on sale and bought it on impulse. There was just one problem: getting the old couch out. Three sets of Craigslist hopefuls struggled valiantly before conceding defeat. The white sofa had become my white whale, a reminder of my marriage and the intimacy that had eluded me. I sat on the floor, sweaty and exasperated, and scowled at its beached bulk.

It left me no choice; the answer was chainsaws. “I didn’t want it to come to this,” I said to the couch as the sawdust flew. I was oddly emotional. The couch had served me well, it just no longer fit the life I wanted to live. No pile of pillows could make it what I needed. Perhaps I was releasing my old loneliness along with my old furniture. I watched as the splintered pieces of my past were stuffed in garbage bags and carried out the door.

Mornings in my new living room, March 2023.

As soon as the sleek new couch arrived, my living room clicked. I gathered wildflowers for my mantle. Friends gave me peacock feathers and old cameras and a drawing manikin that I arranged in a pirouette. My family gave me my grandmother’s photos and my grandfather’s clocks. I filled the space with plants and books and candles. The more I felt like myself, the more the room felt like me.

And my French friends were right: The new couch is the perfect size to snuggle with a lover. These days, we drink coffee on the velvet couch and there is no space between us. He appeared in my life unexpectedly, perhaps summoned by the new couch. Or perhaps I needed to make enough peace with the past in order to welcome this tender new moment. Morning by morning, I am slowly relaxing into a new reality where intimacy is shared freely and couches are made for cuddling.

My friend’s dog, Ody, in my new living room. March 2023.

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One of the unexpected joys of starting over has been hearing from others on similar journeys. If something resonates with you, I’d love for you to leave a comment, drop me an email or share a post with a friend!

Liz is a writer and photographer based in Brooklyn.